In recent decades, the Amazon Rainforest has repeatedly and increasingly been struck by devastating drought along with record heat due to climate change. Add to this record wildfires, rapid deforestation and land conversion for agriculture.
Numerous field studies and modeling have found that these extreme changes are pushing the Amazon toward a tipping point and collapse of the biome — an ecological disaster that would release large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere.
But one research team, in a recently published study, offered up some hope: They found that little-studied low water table wetland Amazon forests — constituting up to 36% of Amazon trees — have stood up well to, and even thrived, during major droughts, with an increase in aboveground biomass.
Those findings, the research team says, put the inevitability of an Amazon tipping point and collapse in some doubt, with the possibility that low water table forests could serve as a refugia for biodiversity. They also urge that these areas become a priority for protection and conservation as a hedge against future climate change.
